I found these on Knowable, but I don’t know if they got the list from somewhere else. My plan is to use them as blog post inspiration, and then link to each post. Probably not in order, and probably not all of them. Some I don’t understand at all, and some just don’t speak to me, and might never.

31 Most Beautiful Sentences in Literature

“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am.” ~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.” ~ Douglas Adams

“The night sky hangs overhead like a sadist’s boot, stretching out the moment of terror before it falls.” ~Glen Cook

“Sometimes I can feel my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.” ~Jonathan Safran Foer

“In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart.” ~Anne Frank

“We cross bridges as we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and the presumption that once our eyes watered.” ~Tom Stoppard

“There are people who, the more you do for them, the less they will do for themselves.” ~Jane Austen

“Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss.” ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

“I was as unburdened as a piece of dandelion fluff, and he was the wind that stirred me about the world.” ~Sara J. Maas

“And I think the violets are little snips of the sky that fell down when the angels cut out holes for the stars to shine through.” ~Lucy Maud Montgomery

“It was a fine cry – loud and long – but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.” ~Toni Morrison

“Above, the stars shone hard and bright, sparks struck off the dark skin of the universe.” ~Stephen King

“I shall sit at the calcified knobs that once were his knees and summon the courage to ask of Zim the question burning in my soul: Why does Joe Torre wear a wristwatch in the dugout?” ~Scott Raab

“Cancer walked all over my father, in large part because he opened the door, turned on the porch light, and invited it in heartily – You old bastard! Come in and have a vodka tonic!” ~Dave Eggers

“(Read it as a warm, wet kiss but think of it as a play.)” ~Claes Oldenburg

“We are all actors, you and I, in a play which nobody wrote and which nobody will see.” ~Susan Cooper

“You can’t go back home to your family, back home to your childhood, back home to romantic love, back home to a young man’s dreams of glory and of fame, back home to exile, to escape to Europe and some foreign land, back home to lyricism, to singing just for singing’s sake, back home to aestheticism, to one’s youthful idea of ‘the artist’ and the all-sufficiency of ‘art’ and ‘beauty’ and ‘love,’ back home to the ivory tower, back home to places in the country, to the cottage in Bermude, away from all the strife and conflict of the world, back home to the father you have lost and have been looking for, back home to someone who can help you, save you, ease the burden for you, back home to the old forms and systems of things which once seemed everlasting but which are changing all the time–back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.” ~Thomas Wolfe

“If you want people to tell the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.” ~Oscar Wilde

“Murderers are not monsters, they are men. And that’s the most frightening thing about them.” ~Alice Sebold

“Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other.” ~John Steinbeck

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spider across the stars.” ~Jack Kerouac

“And meanwhile time goes about its immemorial work of making everyone look and feel like shit.” ~Martin Amis

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.” ~Mary Shelley

“Perhaps it was freedom itself that choke her.” ~Patricia Highsmith

“I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.” ~Herman Melville

“And in that moment, like a swift intake of breath, the rain came.” ~Truman Capote

“He’s more myself than I am.” ~Emily Bronte

“It is to the credit of human nature that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates.” ~Nathaniel Hawthorne